Let Him Go
by armsoftheocean
Summary: He wants to open his mouth and let everything spill out; let Ian knows that yeah, he fucking cares, and he wants all the shit Ian wants, and maybe in another lifetime, in another universe, Mickey deserves Ian and there's nothing stopping them from being together. /Rated T for language


**Apparently all I do now is write Mickey/Ian fanfic. I'm basically obsessed with 3x12 despite how much it breaks my heart so I keep writing fics about it oops. Inspired by Birdy's cover of Passenger's Let Her Go. I probably ~~romanticized~~ Mickey a bit too much but whatever. **

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_maybe one day you'll understand why  
__everything you touch, oh it dies_

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The coldness in Ian's green eyes – eyes that used to look at Mickey with love and admiration; as if he was the most precious fucking thing on earth – chills Mickey to the bone and causes a painful sting inside his chest. There's a clawing sensation in his throat, and he can feel the lump building, threatening to choke him.

He wants to open his mouth and let everything spill out; let Ian knows that yeah, he fucking _cares,_ and he wants all the shit Ian wants, and maybe in another lifetime, in another universe, Mickey deserves Ian and there's nothing stopping them from being together.

All he manages is a pathetic, measly little _don't,_ slipping from his mouth in a broken voice. He fucking hates himself for that small show of emotional weakness, but he thinks he hates Ian more when all he sees is a pair of cold green eyes staring back at him, mocking him for not being able to verbalize everything that runs through his mind. He wants to open his mouth and tell Ian what he means to him, but he can't. He doesn't think there are enough words in the English language to properly summarise what Ian means to him.

He sees flashes of things that could be; moving into an apartment together and having their family over, bickering and arguing over where the TV should go, and what they should do with the spare room. Maybe he's not afraid of his father or his brothers, so he says _fuck it _and they take off, because they only really need each other. Maybe he's not afraid of commitment and love, so they get married and go the whole nine yards with a dog and a white picket fence, because if Ian wanted it, he'd give it to him. Maybe their baggage isn't so heavy that it cripples them, crushing them underneath the weight of the endless years of torture and hostility they inflicted on each other. Maybe Mickey would let Ian love him, and in turn, he'd love Ian back.

Maybe Mickey would just let himself _be,_ and fall for Ian because it would be _so _fucking easy. He's halfway there and in so deep already. Because Mickey can love Ian; it's not hard to fall for someone as intoxicating and enthralling as him.

But as long as Terry Milkovich is in their lives and Mickey is Mickey and Ian is Ian, and they live in the Southside of Chicago, it can't happen; Mickey won't let it happen. Mickey wants Ian to get out of the Southside, and he knows that Ian would inevitably leave him, but not like this. Not when he's trying to run away from a mess Mickey made. He tells himself that's why he doesn't fight for Ian; Ian has a chance and Mickey, well, Mickey's fucked for life. In the back recesses of his mind, there's a snide, mocking voice saying that it's because Mickey's weak, not because Mickey's selfless enough to let the only thing that matters to him walk out of his life.

Having Ian go off and join the army would rip him apart inside; knowing that Ian was giving up on everything they'd had, everything they'd built unknowingly. Ian had wormed his way into Mickey's life and threaded himself so deeply into every part so that if he left, he'd be ripping Mickey apart; the carefully drawn boundaries and seams in Mickey's life falling apart like a threadbare piece of clothing.

Ian was never his and Ian would never be his; Mickey was always meant to be that one fucked up mistake Ian made as a teenager; a stepping stone, of sorts.

Right person, wrong time, and all that, Mickey finds himself thinking as Ian turns his back. The last sight he sees of Ian is a small, bitter smile ghosting his lips, his green eyes lifeless. He's never seen Ian so cold, so aloof, and there's a nagging voice in the back of his mind screaming at him saying that _Mickey's _the one who made Ian like this. He wonders if this is how Ian felt every time Mickey told him to fuck off, that he was just a warm mouth, that he meant nothing to Mickey. A deep, burning hatred for himself builds in his chest upon this realisation, and he despises himself for making Ian doubt anything about their relationship in the past year and a half.

Mickey's the poison that runs through Ian's veins, slowly consuming Ian's limitless capacity to love so completely and without care, and he knows he's changed Ian forever. He'd toyed with Ian's trust and his feelings, pretending it all meant nothing to him even though it was the only thing he gave a shit about. A sense of fury and hatred for everything in his life builds; his father, for instilling a deep fear of being who he was in him, his mother for leaving him.

The cigarette clutched tightly in his hand slips from his grip as he sags down on his bed, his eyes flickering shut in a futile attempt to calm the moisture building. A flurry of scenes and memories rapidly run through his mind, leaving Mickey lightheaded.

Shotgunning beer and sharing joints; the smell of smoke and lime mixed together, with Ian's scent clouding his senses over as he'd bend over Mickey's body, lips pressed against the back of Mickey's neck. Ian spilling secrets and dreams and thoughts that he wouldn't even tell Lip to him at night underneath the bleachers, their bodies pressed flush against each other.

He looks down at his hands, fingers stained with grease from cleaning guns, nails dirty and the thumb pads calloused. Fingers that took Ian apart, bit by bit, and left him broken with every kick and punch, with every hostile insult, with every implication that Ian meant nothing to Mickey except Ian was his whole goddamn fucking _world_.

The acknowledgement of that realisation strikes Mickey in his core and causes his breath to catch in his throat. He brushes it off as quickly as it comes, because it's done, it's over, he's lost his chance – if he'd even had one in the first place.

He knows he's the reason that Ian is broken and this time, Ian's gone and Mickey can't fix the mess he made. He thinks of the times the redhead had begun to crack; small fissures lining his delicate, pale skin, when Monica would hurl into his life like a hurricane, intent on destroying everything and anything in her path, careless of any sort of consequences. When Lip disapproved of Ian's choice in fucking the neighbourhood thug. When his dreams about West Point got fucked up. Mickey had been there in his own way, letting Ian ramble to him in the silence of the night, and letting Ian tuck himself into Mickey's side whenever his green eyes glassed over with tears.

He can't piece the small fragments of the redhead back together or make him smile again; he won't be the one Ian Gallagher goes to when he's falling apart any more, because this time, Mickey's the causation. He's pushed too far and now Ian's out of his reach, and spinning out of Mickey's orbit.

The second Ian turned his back he's pulling and unravelling the delicate thread that's been holding Mickey together.

Red spots cloud his vision as he squeezes his eyes shut tighter, and he thinks of Ian's bright red hair and his sunny smile and his wide green eyes. It makes an ache resonate through his chest that licks its way up his body and sink down deep into his bones, leaving a pain that he knows will never fade. It stings and burns, and he knows his shoulders are shaking with barely suppressed sobs. For the first time in Mickey Milkovich's life, he lets his emotions take heed and pull him under the crashing waves, until he's drowning and gasping desperately for oxygen.

The masochist in himself thinks of everything they could have had as the carefully constructed walls around him come down.

Maybe in another lifetime, another universe.

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_and you see him as you fall asleep  
never to touch, never to keep  
'cause you loved him too much  
but you dived too deep_

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**Reviews would be super cool :)**


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